The woman of 108 told to wait 18 months for hearing aid

A woman aged 108 has been told she must wait 18 months before the Health Service will give her the hearing aid she needs.

Former piano teacher Olive Beal, one of the oldest people in Britain, has poor eyesight and uses a wheelchair.

The delay could mean she will be unable to communicate and listen to the music she loves.

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Now her family have said that realistically Mrs Beal is unlikely ever to receive the digital hearing aid that will save her from isolation.

The one-time suffragette is one of hundreds of thousands of older people made to wait up to two years and sometimes more for modern digital hearing aids that make a dramatic difference to their ability to hear and communicate.

The case of Mrs Beal comes just a few days after the Mail revealed how another centenarian, Esme Collins, has been threatened with eviction from the nursing home where she has lived for ten years in a dispute between home owners and the local council over her fees.

The Daily Mail's Dignity for the Elderly campaign has highlighted the way the elderly are made to pay high bills while their needs and interests are sidelined in the system meant to care for them.

Mrs Beal, who lives in a care home in Deal in Kent, has used an old-fashioned analogue hearing aid for the last five years.

She has now been assessed as needing a more modern digital hearing aid which cuts out background noise and makes it easier to hear conversation or music. These cost around £1,000 on the private market.

But Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust have told her family she must wait 18 months before she gets one on the NHS. By then Mrs Beal will be aged 110.

She said yesterday: 'I could be dead by then.'

Her grand- daughter Maria Scott, 52, said: 'I spoke to her doctor some time ago about getting her a new hearing aid, as the existing one did not seem to be working for her.

'After a hearing test they said, "Yes, she does need a digital hearing aid, but there is an 18-month waiting list".

'I would have thought they would take her age into account as she probably has not got 18 months to wait.

'Olive worked hard from the age of 16 to her late 60s and paid taxes. She has been healthy all her life and lived with her daughter until 15 years ago - she has never sponged off the state.

'Her eyesight is falling, and if she cannot hear then she will be isolated from the outside world.

'Her analogue hearing aid does not filter out background noise so it makes it very difficult for her to hear clearly. But the digital one would allow her to hear people talking to her and to CDs. She loves music hall numbers.'

Mrs Beal went to school in London with Christabel Pankhurst, daughter of suffragette leader Emily, and helped at suffragette demonstrations.

She brought up four children but only her eldest son, now in his eighties, survives.

Her youngest son was a World War Two soldier killed in Normandy on the day after the D-Day landings. She was widowed 45 years ago. Donna Tipping of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf said: 'I am afraid this is a common problem.

'In some parts of the country waiting times are more than two years, which is shocking.

'The new digital hearing aids can really transform people's lives.

'It is an issue of quality of life, with isolation, frustration and withdrawing from society caused by loss of hearing, and it is sad because this is reversible.'